I’ve seen the question a few times now: “How do I compare two plans side-by-side in Plan Explorer?” Management Studio allows you to view multiple graphical plans that are visible simultaneously, either by generating plans for every statement in a batch, or by generating plans in separate query windows and then splitting the panes. However, at ...

For those of you using the SQL Server 2008 R2 version of Management Studio, and have applied Service Pack 1, you have probably noticed that clicking on a ShowPlan in grid results no longer shows the graphical plan, but rather opens a new window with the raw XML.
For example, running the following query:
SELECT TOP (5) ...

On Friday, we published a new version of our free query plan analysis tool, SQL Sentry Plan Explorer. As noted in the change list, we've added a couple of important features.
SQL Server 2012 support
With a whole slew of changes to the showplan schema in Denali, we've added operators and columns to reflect these changes. For example, you will ...

UPDATE - This demo kit has been overhauled:
http://sqlperformance.com/2014/03/t-sql-queries/updated-plan-explorer-demo-kit
Plan Explorer is a free application from SQL Sentry, designed
to make execution plan analysis faster and easier. It was developed in response
to customer demand for deeper query analysis, but was ...

This question came up on twitter, and I thought a quick blog post would be better than a series of 140-character snippets. Management Studio does not do the best job at highlighting missing indexes. If you have a simple query plan that represents a single statement, no problem; however, if you have a plan that represents a multi-batch statement, ...

This week I reported a few bugs - one with sp_helptext, one with Activity Monitor in Management Studio, and one in the new sys.dm_server_services DMV.#683234 : sp_helptext treats non-system objects as system objects For this one there is at least one weird case where running sp_helptext against on object prefixed with dbo ignores the dbo and tries ...

Today we released a new build of SQL Sentry Plan Explorer. The build # is 6.2.34 and you can download it from the usual location.
Plan Explorer Changes
The updates in this release include the following:
A new ''Check for Updates'' feature accessible via the Help menu:
Other new additions to the Help menu:
Enable/disable the ...

Last week, Microsoft offered up an early Christmas present: SQL Server 2005 SP4. This week, it's SQL Sentry's turn to play Santa Claus: several new features and fixes have been packaged up into SQL Sentry Plan Explorer 1.1 (build 6.0.67.0).
So, what's new? Several wish list items have been fulfilled (hey, it is Christmas, after ...

Today I was digging more into SQL Sentry's Plan Explorer, and I continue to discover little things I think you will find valuable in your performance tuning and troubleshooting efforts.
Let's say I am analyzing a plan for a relatively simple batch:
SELECT * FROM sys.objects;CREATE TABLE #foo([object_id] INT, def NVARCHAR(MAX));INSERT ...

Yesterday, Greg Gonzalez (blog | twitter) announced a beta project for SQL Sentry's latest offering: Plan Explorer. I have been playing with the early versions of the beta, and I can tell you that DBAs should be very excited about having this tool in their arsenal. This is a free companion to SQL Server Management Studio that greatly ...